It is well known that, upon color development of a silver halide color photographic material, an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine color developing agent reacts with a coupler to produce indophenol, indoaniline, indamine, azomethine, phenoxazine, phenazine or a like dye to thereby form a dye image. Among these couplers, those used for formation of magenta dye images include 5-pyrazolone, cyanoacetophenone, indazolone, pyrazolobenzimidazole and pyrazolotriazole couplers.
Magenta couplers which have hitherto been widely employed and undergone investigations are mostly 5-pyrazolone couplers. It is known that dye images formed by 5-pyrazolone couplers have superior fastness to heat and light but that the images contain a yellow component because of unnecessary absorption at about 430 nm, causing color turbidity.
In order to reduce the yellow component, there have conventionally been proposed coupler skeletons for formation of magenta dye images, such as a pyrazolobenzimidazole skeleton as described in British Pat. No. 1,047,612, an indazolone skeleton as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,770,447 and a 1H-pyrazolo[5,1-c][1,2,4]triazole skeleton as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,067. There have also recently been proposed a 1H-imidazo[1,2-b]pyrazole skeleton as described in European Patent 119,741, a 1H-pyrazolo[1,5-b][1,2,4]triazole skeleton as described in European Patent 119,860, a 1H-pyrazolo[1,5-d]tetrazole skeleton as described in Research Disclosure (hereinafter called "RD") 24220 (Jun., 1984) and a 1H-pyrazolo[1,5-b]pyrazole skeleton as described in RD 24230 (Jun.,1984).
Among these, a 1H-pyrazole[5,1-c][1,2,4]triazole coupler as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,067 and British Pat. No. 1,252,418 and 1,334,515, a 1H-imidazo[1,2-b]pyrazole coupler as described in European Pat. No. 119,741, a 1H-pyrazolo[1,5-b][1,2,4]triazole coupler as described in European Pat. No. 119,860, a 1H-pyrazolo[1,5-d]tetrazole coupler as described in RD 24220 (Jun., 1984) and a 1H-pyrazole[1,5-b]pyrazole coupler as described in RD 24230 (Jun., 1984) form magenta dyes which show excellent absorption properties having no unnecessary absorption within the visible light range in a solvent such as ethyl acetate, dibutyl phthalate and the like.
However, among these couplers, azomethine dyes formed by a 1H-pyrazolo[5,1-c][1,2,4]triazole coupler had remarkably low fastness to light and markedly deteriorated the performances of color photographic light-sensitive materials, particularly color photographic light-sensitive materials for print. Azomethine dyes formed by other pyrazoloazole magenta couplers had light fastness insufficient for use in color photographic light-sensitive materials, particularly color photographic light-sensitive materials for print.